Ebooks for CS Teacher Professional

DevelopmentMark Guzdial

School of Interactive Computing

Story

• Why ebooks (vs. MOOCs) for on-line CS

teacher learning

• Ed Psych Principles for ebooks

• Cognitive Load, Multimodality, Worked

Examples+Practice

• Demo of our ebook

• Usability of three ebooks

• Runestone, Zyante, CS Circles

• Do teachers learn from this?

Why Ebooks

• On-line is necessary to reach CS10K.

• Characteristics of potential CS teachers:

• Over-worked, little STEM background,

time in small chunks.

• MOOCs put lectures (time-based) on-line.

• Our teachers fit the demographic of

MOOC non-completers.

• Ebooks can fit into a teacher’s pace.

Ed Psych Principles

• Lower cognitive load

• Keep the germane. Lessen the extrinsic.

• Multimodality Principle.

• Use audio to increase comprehension of complex

visuals.

• Worked examples plus practice.

• Sweller showed that worked examples can be more

efficient for learning than more problem-solving.

• Trafton & Reiser showed interleaving examples +

practice was optimal.

Demo here

• Or video if Internet fails

Other Ebook Models

• Comparing to Runestone Interactive

CS CirclesZyante

CS CirclesZyante

ActiveCode

• Execute code in the browser

• Can edit the code

• Results are displayed

Runestone

Code Visualization

• Step through the code

• Displays variable and object values

• Shows program output

CS CirclesZyante

Runestone

Parsons Problems• Drag and drop code blocks in

correct order

• Bank of code blocks

• Feedback on order and

indention

CS CirclesZyante

Runestone

Usability: Runestone & Zyante

• Teachers in our study preferred Runestone,

with Zyante next.

f = # of teachers preferring

that style widget

What do users do?

Teachers Learned from Book

• Results from pilot study (3 more subjects to

analyze)

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Pretest Chapters 1 & 2 Chapters 3 & 4 Chapters 5 & 6 Chapters 7 & 8

Pretest and Posttest Scores

Participant 1

Participant 2

Participant 3

Where we’re going next…

• Automating the process of running the

study

• Open it up to any teacher anywhere

• Analyzing pilot data

• Pre-test => use (log file) => Post-test

• Adaptive Parson’s Problems

• Developing student ebook (IUSE)

• Working with Python-based CSP

Curriculum

• EarSketch in Gwinnett County

• Developing a standardized test (IUSE)

Thanks

• Our team: Barbara Ericson (co-PI), Briana

Morrison, Miranda Parker, Steven Moore,

Vipul Thakur

• Special thanks to Brad Miller and Philip Guo

• Work supported by NSF Grant #1138378

• But anything you don’t like is our fault

Spare Slides

Usability: Look and Feel